This invention relates to generally to vehicle air-conditioning systems, and particularly to a system in which at least an air-conditioning parameter, such as a conditioned air blowout speed or direction, is automatically changed based on sensed conditions to increase the comfort of occupants within a vehicle passenger compartment.
In Japanese Utility Model Publication No. Hei. 7-54010 there is proposed a vehicle air-conditioning system for changing the blowout direction of conditioned air blown from an outlet by imparting an oscillating motion to movable louvers in a swing grill. A switch for setting a time during which the movable louvers are temporarily stopped from swinging is provided at the front of the swing grill. Through the swing louver device, a desired swing state can be obtained by a vehicle occupant setting a swing pause time with the pause time selection switch.
However, with conventional swinging louver devices, it has been very troublesome for the vehicle occupant to have to change the swing pause time via manual operation of the pause time selection switch every time an air-conditioning load influence, such as the amount of solar radiation entering the vehicle, changes. That is, manually adjusting the swing pause time shorter when incident solar radiation is weak, and manually adjusting the swing pause time longer when incident solar radiation is strong, is difficult.
Furthermore, obtaining an optimal swing state with respect to air-conditioning load factors which change slowly as air-conditioning proceeds, such as passenger compartment temperature, are still more complicated. That is, when the passenger compartment temperature is high the swing pause time needs to be set to a relatively long time, and when the passenger compartment temperature is low the swing pause time needs to be set to a relatively shorter time. Manual adjustment therefore becomes even more difficult.